Montville knocks
New Milford out

MONTVILLE - In Todd Ward, the New Milford High boys basketball team has one of the best post players in Connecticut.

Thursday night, in a CIAC Class III second round game against Montville, Ward lived up to that billing with 18 points, 13 rebounds and five blocks.

But the 6-6 junior forward needed scoring help from his teammates. That's where the Green Wave fell short. That's also where No. 6 Montville took advantage as the Indians posted a 55-40 win to advance to a state quarterfinal where they will face New London.

"I thought if we had gotten a usual night from the rest of our guys that we would've won the game," New Milford coach
Jim Luchsinger
said.

Instead, the Green Wave are left to hold a stat sheet and look at the numbers. Rick Casagrande, who hit eight three-pointers in a game earlier in the season, was held scoreless on 0-8 shooting. Thomas Calhoun, a slashing small forward who has double digit scoring potential, scored just six points as he battled foul trouble for most of the night.

"We knew that if we let Todd get his points and held the other guys down that we had a good shot to win the game," Montville junior guard Michael Quinn said. "We wanted to be physical with him. We had strong players that wanted to take the challenge of playing against a guy like him. We wanted to limit his touches in the paint, double him when we got the ball, and keep him off the glass when a shot went up."

Montville wasn't that successful in controlling Ward, but the Green Wave had major problems with Quinn all evening. Quinn, a tall point guard at 6-1, is the nephew of Newtown coach John Quinn and the son of St. Thomas More coach Jerry Quinn.

As dominant as Ward was down low, Quinn was equally masterful on the perimeter. He penetrated at will in the second half. His scoring, 14 of his 18 points came after halftime, broke the game open in the fourth quarter.

"Coach (Gary Ballestrini) told us that we were taking too many jump shots in the first half," Quinn said. "He told us to take the ball to the basket. If we did that, then we would get good shots."

Quinn and Ward canceled each other out. The difference was that Quinn received ample help. Tony Homsey scored 12 points.
Ben Heller
also reached double figures with 11 points. That said, the Green Wave were still within arms length for most of the game.

New Milford had three possessions in the fourth quarter where they had a chance to cut the deficit below six points, but they weren't able to capitalize on the opportunities.

"That killed us," Luchsinger said. "We didn't do a good job of setting screens to get Rick open."

The Green Wave also had problems pushing the ball in transition. New Milford averages 63 points per game and they have lived off of easy transition baskets all season. Thursday night, they had 28 points at the end of the third quarter.

"They did a good job of getting back," Luchsinger said. "They stopped our fastbreak. We struggled tonight. We had no rhythm."